


Hang Your Hoodie Inside-Out (the Strange Case of Pear Wentz)

by azurejay (andchimeras)



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Babies, Fairy Tales, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-15
Updated: 2008-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 07:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/azurejay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Pete thinks his baby is a changeling. (Written pre-actualfax!baby.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hang Your Hoodie Inside-Out (the Strange Case of Pear Wentz)

He was born in January, on Twelfth Night--and of course nobody who was there had any idea what that even meant, not right away—and Pete looked him in his slowly blinking, muddy-grey eyes and said, "Aw, fuck."

"Peter," Ashlee said, and smacked him upside the head; gently, since the baby was on her chest and really, she'd just given birth. "Language."

"It was just a joke, dude," Pete said to his son, trying to negotiate. "You can't really be serious."

"What?" Ashlee said wearily. "What are you talking about?"

"His name," Pete said. "We have to name him Pear."

Ashlee rolled her eyes and ignored Pete, but when he'd left for coffee and hysterical phone calls, she tipped the baby back a bit and looked at him closely.

"Hi," she said, smiling at him as he opened his mouth reflexively, and then, "oh." And, "Goddammit, Pete."

  
Pear Joseph Kingston Wentz is a good baby. He's sweet and placid and friendly and never wakes up in the middle of the night; he might even, perhaps, sleep a bit _too_ much.

"This is not fair," Pete whispers two months in, leaning over Pear's crib at two in the morning. The baby is on his back, fists under his chin, his lemon-yellow onesie scrunched around his chubby joints and joins. "This is so unfuckingfair. You spend all damn day with your mama and you're supposed to wake up five times a night so that I can _play_ with you and she can _sleep_." He makes baby-gentle grabby hands over the railing and sighs.

"I'm so bored," he tells Pear. "That's the worst part of not being able to sleep, not that you'd know a single goddamn thing about that, Mister Pear Van Winkle." He crosses his arms on the railing and counts Pear's breaths for a few minutes. "Bored bored bored."

Eventually, like most nights, he gets tired of complaining and just stands and keeps watch instead.

  
"This kid has better manners than half his parents," Patrick remarks, after six-month-old Pear covers his mouth before burping.

"I _know_, right," Pete says. He flops down on the couch beside Patrick and sucks on a juice box with confused despair. "It's fucking bizarre."

"Hey," Patrick says, tipping Pear back, one hand cradling his head and neck, so they can both watch him yawn and stretch a bit. "Hey, maybe he's not actually yours."

Pete frowns and looks at the imploded juice box in his hands, and at his baby--_his_ goddamn baby--in Patrick's hands.

"What are you saying," he says angrily. "Look at that fucking hair, dude, seriously--"

"Relax, relax," Patrick says, and rolls his eyes. "Just kidding, haha."

"Right, okay," Pete says. Pear blinks at Pete and waves his fists. Pete reaches over and pokes him in the belly. "Just kidding, haha."

  
But the thought won't relax, won't quit, won't take "just kidding" for an answer. Pete spends many hours researching baby switches in hospitals, and several hours interrogating the staff at the hospital where Pear was born, and several more hours listening to his lawyers lecture him on harassment and blahblahblah while Ashlee holds his hand and frowns at him and Pear sleeps--_sleeps_\--in a bassinet in the corner of the lawyers' office.

"He's your baby," Ashlee says, visibly on the verge of tears, when they get back home. "He's _our_ baby, okay. I know I've been overprotective, but if you really want to help with him that bad--"

"No, no," Pete says. He pats her shoulders and smooths her hair. "You're not overprotective. It's okay. I'll do more, but you don't need to change anything. Except maybe his diaper."

She laughs and shoves at him a little and gives him the baby to change.

  
In July, Pete lets a few photographers "catch" him shopping (organic vegetable market, baby store, Starbucks, gas station) with Pear in a Snugglee against his chest. The pictures perambulate around the internet within a few hours, and Pete uses one for the wallpaper on his laptop. Pear has his head butted against Pete's chest, and a trick of LA's glaring, over-diffuse light and the market's canopy in the background gives his head, with its shock of black hair, a radiant green halo.

While Pete is working, he will often minimize whatever panes he's got open and study the picture. A few meetings go twice as long as they should because of it.

  
It comes to him at night, weeks and weeks later, almost at Midsummer, while he's sitting with his feet up and his arms around his knees in the rocking chair in Pear's room. The moon is shining blue and loving through the window, across the crib where Pear is, of course, sleeping soundly. The night is quiet enough that Pete can count his breaths without leaning over the crib.

Pear's mobile is space ships and suns and unicorns; Pete made it with Travis the week before the baby was born. The mobile is still. The room is still, full of stuffed animals bigger than Pear, and tiny clothes, and tiny shoes.

He thinks and thinks and finally it comes to him: the answer.

"Of course," he says to the sleeping room.

  
"Your baby is not a fucking changeling," Patrick says.

"Seriously," Andy says. "What are you _on_?"

"No, no," Pete says. "He sleeps all the time, and he _glows_, and he was born on Twelfth Night, and he made us name him _Pear_ for fuck's sake--"

"Shut up, you lunatic," Andy says. "Changelings are bad kids, they _don't_ sleep--they _bite_ people, dude."

Patrick squints at Andy and shakes his head. "Also," he adds, "changelings _aren't real_."

"You don't understand," Pete says. "He's not my baby. Something took my baby, guys."

Andy and Patrick stare at him. "Don't say that to Ashlee," Andy says.

"What are you _on_?" Patrick says.

  
Turns out, Andy was right.

Ashlee throws a cup from her breast pump at him and yells, "Keep your fucking crazy shit to yourself right now, okay! I can't deal with _two_ developing brains!"

A wail goes up from Pear's room and Ashlee puts her head in her hands. "You woke him up," she says to Pete, "you go explain to him why he's not napping anymore."

Pete holds the rubber cup out to her and she snatches it from his hand and points down the hall with it. Pete goes.

"Hi, hi," Pete says as he picks up Pear and holds him firmly so he'll know he's safe, bouncing him gently and patting his back. "Hi, it's okay, I'm sorry."

Pear coughs out the last of his frightened crying and stares at Pete.

"I'm nuts," Pete says to him. "I'm completely bonkers, baby. You _are_ my baby, right?"

Pear blinks, his eyes losing their startled roundness.

Pete sighs. "By the time you can talk and answer me, it'll be too late. I'll love you just like my own baby and my baby will be totally integrated into elf society. Or eaten. Depending on what kind of elves pulled the old switcheroo."

Pear presses his head to Pete's sternum and Pete sighs, patting his back some more. "Whatever," Pete says. He sits in the rocking chair to get the baby back to sleep. Always, always sleeping. He settles Pear in a lump on his chest and crosses his arms across the baby's back, hands cradling his legs and feet. He rocks the chair, feeling the floor through his heels on every touchdown.

He hums a little something and Pear slowly, slowly gets heavy with sleep. It's so weird how a sleeping baby is heavier. Pete puts his cheek on the baby's head, just to get closer to his good baby smell and the steady peacefulness of him.

A long while later, Ashlee comes to the door to apologize for yelling at Pete, and to get Pear up for lunch. The rocking chair is gone still and Pete is snoring softly--not loud enough to wake the baby or himself.

  
End.


End file.
